Councillors reject bid to stop rise in allowances

Councillor Rosemary Dartnall, leader of the Labour group on Shropshire Council, believed accepting the increase was "tone deaf"

Councillors in Shropshire have rejected a proposal that would have seen their basic allowance frozen.

All 74 councillors receive an allowance of about £14,500, which is due to increase by about £460 in October.

The Labour group leader Rosemary Dartnall said stopping the 3.2% rise would save the council about £44,500 a year.

But most elected members at a full council meeting on Thursday said the money was already below inflation and considerably lower than minimum wage.

It comes in the wake of calls from a group of politicians to freeze the increase as part of efforts to help prevent the local authority from effectively going bust.

The Labour group on Shropshire Council and its leader were behind the call.

And while the council needs to save, it is a relatively small percentage of the tens of millions of pounds bosses say the council needs to prevent it from running out of money.

'Tone deaf'

"Shropshire Council has been rolling forward to this financial crisis for a number of years, during which jobs have been under threat and we've lost council staff," Dartnall said.

"Obviously there have been a number of redundancies, and staff have had to work under a bad morale position where they could lose their job at any time."

She said the authority's new Liberal Democrat administration had declared a financial emergency and that it felt "tone deaf" to take an increase in allowance.

"We all knew this was coming, but this is crunch point - the chips are down, we've got to cut every penny that we can cut," Dartnall said, adding it was a "necessary sacrifice".

In response, Liberal Democrat councillor Bernie Bentick accused the Labour group of engaging in "virtue signalling" and "political point scoring".

He said that many councillors rely on the allowance "for financial survival and do not have the benefit of a council or other pension".

Councillors do not receive a salary, instead they are each given an allowance.

Some of them rely on this income more than others, and, as costs and bills continue to rise - with inflation at 3.8% in August - freezing the allowance would mean a real terms reduction.

Clarification 26 September 2025: This article has been updated to include a response from the ruling Liberal Democrat group on Shropshire Council to reflect the debate about allowances